Covid-19 fueled a surge of new businesses, but the trend is evolving

The surge of new businesses that started with the Covid-19 pandemic may have lost a little steam from its peak in 2022, but entrepreneurs continue to launch new businesses at numbers not seen prior to 2020. New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows more than 5 million new businesses were formed in 2022. That’s down from 5.3 million in 2021, but far more than the 4.3 million in 2020 or at any point since the agency began tracking the metric in 2004. Despite the decline compared to 2021, business formations in 2022 were up 44% from their pre-pandemic level. The continued surge in new business applications comes even as many current business owners are worried about the chances of a possible recession.